For Shania Twain, her fall from the international lights has been as documented as her rise, and we'll look at her peak in the country/pop scene.
Up!, released in 2002, and the next album after her 1997 smash hit album, Come On Over, was in hindsight her swan song, before she lost the will to sing and perform. The album consists of two CDs: a red coloured CD and a green coloured CD. Both CDs consist of 19 songs (which is a bit overboard in the first place), one with pop-infused songs, and the other with the original country-styled songs.
Unfortunately, the conversion to the pop scene somewhat failed for Shania. Most of the radio stations chose to play her country singles instead of her pop singles. And from a musical standpoint, it is quite glaring why. For example, I'm Gonne Getcha Good, is easily her best track as a country song, but did not carry that same momentum as a pop song. The use of a electric guitar can sometimes pull the heart out of a song, and in this song, it did. There is always something about a steel guitar to tug at the heart strings - ask Merle Haggard and Glen Campbell about it.
Other songs, on the other hand, fared quite well in the transfer from country to pop, such as the title track, Up!. By far the most successful song of the album, her voice and songwriting really shine, telling the listener that, no matter what, you're always going up.
All things considered, Shania and Mutt made a great pair when it came to songwriting, but the listener can't help but wonder who they were channelling when writing and recording Ka-Ching. Somewhere Bob Marley is smiling and bobbing his head to this track. The reggae-esque song kicks off the second half of the album and leads the listener into no-man's land. It is here where we see why Shania should have stayed in the country scene.
Ever since this album though, her life has gone downhill; Mutt left her four years ago. In an interview, she revealed that the whole situation left her without the drive to write or perform music. Enter Oprah. A new series, starring Shania and airing on OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) is chronicling her long climb back to the stage where she was her best.
Overall, the sheer number of songs on one disc kind of shies the average listener away, but two discs? With 19 songs? Even Mutt should have known he was pushing it too much with so many songs, and a rogue attempt at gaining success ended with the cost of a fantastic Canadian country artist being wiped off the musical map.
The Heilman Rating (Double): country album: 8/10; pop album: 5/10
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